


straight to center

by Koraki



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Female Roy Mustang, Hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 10:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koraki/pseuds/Koraki
Summary: Afternoon, a heavy quiet in the air, and Hawkeye’s fourth gun jams on the last bullet.





	straight to center

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reconditarmonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/gifts).

> Ambiguously post-canon. Roy is a woman. Title from “Recessional” by Vienna Teng.

Afternoon, a heavy quiet in the air, and Hawkeye’s fourth gun jams on the last bullet. Roy knows it immediately by the pause in the sound of its discharge and the way she breathes briefly out between her teeth, resigned disappointment. 

Another man bursts through the door Hawkeye is watching and takes aim at Roy. He gets a round of fire off before Hawkeye has lunged forward from Roy’s back and disarmed him. The second round shatters the quiet air with noise, but Hawkeye has the rifle in her hand now, Roy can see out of the corner of her eye. Roy pivots on her heel and sends the man from the room in a burst of flame.

They are holed up together like that for a good twenty minutes longer, back to back in the collapsing parlor of an old Cretan mansion. Dust stirs in the sunlight trickling through the smeared window (they stood away from it, to dissuade any snipers). A chorus of cicadas drone in the overgrown fields beyond. Every few minutes a couple of men try to rush the room through Hawkeye’s door, from the kitchen, or Roy’s door, from the office, and are turned back.

There’s a lull in the onslaught. Outside the window the ragged men gather, too far to reach with a shot. Not too far for Hawkeye if she had her sniper rifle, but she doesn’t. Roy listens and hears none of them left in the house -- the creaking floorboards were an easy tell. Turning, she sees Hawkeye adjust her grip on the rifle with a barely perceptible wince.

“Grazed my arm, sir,” Hawkeye says when she feels Roy look at her. She turns. “I was slow on the disarm.”

Roy nods and the two of them turn back as one to watch the doors, but the militants don’t enter the building again; beyond the window they group together and move away and then melt one by one into the fields, going back toward the forest.

“Put that down, Lieutenant,” Roy says at last when she is fairly certain the last of the men have gone for now.

Hawkeye crouches and sets the appropriated rifle down, turning her arm to look it over. Roy breathes in. The right sleeve of Hawkeye’s camouflage jacket is torn and dark with dried blood, not too much of it and none fresh, but the palm and fingers of her right hand are bright red and blistering with angry burns.

“Lieutenant,” Roy says and crouches beside her, appalled at the damage.

Hawkeye’s mouth sets itself in a firm line, her eyes darkening. She says nothing but lets Roy take her hand and draw it over her knee, and spread the fingers out.

Before the place where the bullet grazed her, Hawkeye’s arm is black from powder burn. Roy rolls Hawkeye’s sleeve up carefully. Her fingers brush warm skin with the muscles in Hawkeye’s forearm tense beneath it. A little to the side and Hawkeye would have lost the hand. Had she grabbed the thing by the barrel? Foolhardy, especially for her. 

“Your hand, Lieutenant,” Roy murmurs pointlessly, fumbling in one of her own jacket pockets for the roll of bandages and half-empty tube of antiseptic she carries with her on field missions. She has to search them out by feel and pulls out the small tube of burn cream first by mistake -- one of Havoc’s jokes, a few months ago. Roy had forgotten about that. She hasn’t had occasion to use it: aimed at a human being, her fire rarely leaves anyone wounded. 

Working quickly, as carefully as she can, Roy smears the burn cream over Hawkeye’s palm and fingers, dabs the antiseptic on her arm. This hand could have been lost, she thinks. Her fingers press too hard against the palm of Hawkeye’s hand. Hawkeye inhales roughly. Roy gentles her touch, finishing with the cream, and begins to bandage Hawkeye’s hand, turning it over in her own.

“I still need to be able to shoot, sir,” Hawkeye says mildly, meaning that Roy is taking too long.

Roy is staring at the back of Hawkeye’s hand where it rests in hers, warm and strong despite its injury. Every line carved on the backs of the knuckles, the short-cropped nails, the curve of Hawkeye’s fingers at uneasy rest, join in her heart and touch her with aching familiarity and just as much physicality as if Hawkeye had reached out and rested the tips of those fingers against the side of Roy’s face. This hand has killed, has buried a child, has drawn weapons and pulled the trigger without hesitation in Roy’s name, in the service of Roy’s dream. This hand carries Roy’s life.

No words are sufficient to explain this to Lieutenant Hawkeye. If not for all that stands between them and before them, Roy would lean forward in this moment and kiss that hand, again and again, cover it in kisses in a vain attempt to convey to Hawkeye its true worth.

Of course Roy does nothing of the kind. She fastens off the bandage, leans back on her heels, and stands. “Keep an eye on that, Lieutenant,” she says. “I need you with  _ both  _ hands functioning.” 

“Sir,” Hawkeye says, and is quiet.

Roy crosses the room and looks out the blurred window into red light, the sun over the treetops in the distance. Breda’s team isn’t due in town until tomorrow, noon. The cicadas’ buzz crescendos to a scream. 

There’s a long night ahead of them.


End file.
